Matching Your Diet To Your DNA-Part 3

In this 3rd and final installment, we will go over what we should be eating for optimal health of our body.

What Should We Eat?

•          Our ancestors rarely consumed cereal grains and had no dairy, sugars, or processed foods.

•          Game and wild plant foods contained less fat, more protein, more roughage, and more micronutrients than do foods from our supermarkets.

•          Fruits and vegetables were consumed within hours of being gathered, typically with minimal or no processing and often uncooked.

•          Foods contained higher average content of vitamins and minerals (in excess of currently recommended dietary allowances).

•          73% of world-wide hunter-gatherer societies derived >50% of their food from animals, only 14% of these societies derived >50% of their food from plants (energy from proteins > that of carbohydrates).

•          organic, grass-fed lean meats (avoid grain fed), wild fish (avoid farmed), and eggs (free-range, organic)

•          plenty of fresh organic vegetables and fruit, emphasis on vegetables

•         Paleo diet is a good guide

This is not meant to promote any one "diet" over another.  You must think of food more as a lifestyle change, not a fad diet.  Developing good habits will go a long way and make it easier to stay on track with your healthy lifestyle.  Please remember, this is only a guide.  It doesn't mean you must change everything you are doing overnight, but may it encourage you to make a small change here and there until you are ready for another.  Don't complicate things, think simple and old-fashioned when it comes to what you eat. 

Matching Your Diet To Your DNA-Part 2

So what about our genetics?  Do they play a role in our health?  Here are a few key points in understanding the role of our genes and how often we blame our genes for the illnesses we suffer from when it's our poor lifestyle choices we should pay closer attention to.

•          Our genes our programmed for health. It is toxicity and/or deficiency affecting gene expression that leads to sickness and disease.

•          Our genes do NOT differ from our paleolithic, hunter-gatherer, pre-agricultural, pre-industrial ancestors.

•          Our ancestors, and surviving tribes that model their lifestyles, did not die from the diseases of lifestyle like heart disease, hypertension, cancer, diabetes, and stroke or suffer from the degenerative or autoimmune diseases like arthritis, lupus, M.S., chronic fatigue, low fertility, depression, etc. like modern humans do.

•          The only difference between our healthy ancestors and our sick society is toxicity and deficiency.  The genes are the same!

•          Built into our genes is the blueprint for optimal nutrition (innate intelligence).  To be healthy, we must eat and live congruently with this innate intelligence (provide it with sufficient amounts of ingredients it needs and avoid things that are toxic or interfering).

•          Modern illness is due to environmental NOT genetic factors.  Modern illnesses are AVOIDABLE! Modern health is ATTAINABLE!

Excerpts taken from Dr. James Chestnut's book "The Innate Diet & Natural Hygiene".  The 3rd and final part will come out next week.  We will talk about what kinds of food support our genes, which are best to avoid, and ideas to help us achieve abundant health!

Matching Your Diet To Your DNA-Part 1

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."       

What Is Health?:  10 fundamental truths regarding health

•          All living things, including humans, are composed of individual living cells working harmoniously together in a self-healing, self-regulating ecosystem to maintain homeostasis (balance), health and life.

•          Our cells are genetically equipped from birth with all the necessary intelligence to function properly. Our cells are programmed for health and to NEVER dysfunction without a physical, chemical, or emotional stressor.

•          Our cells are all genetically programmed with the perfect recipe for health; it is our choices and our living environment that determine whether or not the proper ingredients are supplied.

•          Health, by definition is a state of consistent balanced cell function.

•          Sickness is a lack of consistent balanced cell function. Sickness is a lack of health just like darkness is a lack of light.  If we want to make someone healthier, you have to increase the amount of health, you have to increase the level of balanced cell function.

•          The function of our cells determines our state of health and sickness.

•          The cause of all non-homeostatic cell function is stressors.

•          All health stressors can be divided into one of two categories: deficiencies in the required ingredients for homeostatic cell functions, & toxicities that drive cell function away from homeostasis.

•          Because cells are born with all the required genetic intelligence for homeostasis and health, cells always function perfectly in relation to any given environment.  Symptoms do NOT represent an error in the intelligence of cells, but represent important signals from cells telling you that there is something wrong (deficiency or toxicity), and that they are under stress.  Illnesses represent the body’s best ability to adapt to a chronic unhealthy environment, to chronic deficiency or toxicity, to chronic stressors.  The cells NEVER function incorrectly, the environment is unhealthy!

•          In order to function properly and produce health, cells must have all requirements met and be free of toxicity.  In other words, it is impossible to be 100% healthy by supplying the cells with only some of the requirements or by eliminating only some toxins.  Plants can’t be healthy even if they have all the required sunlight, water, and nutrients they require if they are missing sunlight!

These 10 fundamental truths are taken from Dr. James Chestnut's book "The Innate Diet & Natural Hygiene".  Stay tuned for Part 2 addressing what part our genes play and what exactly we should be eating to express our body's fullest potential.

Welcome to my new website!!

I am pleased to announce my new website is up and running!  I know you can read a bit about me in the About section, but here is a blurb in 60 seconds or less...

My name is Dr. Andrea Bologna and I have been a chiropractor for the last 12 years.  It's hard to believe, but time goes by so fast and it seemed not that long ago I packed up my things and moved from my parents house in Kelowna BC and flew to Dallas Texas with 2 suitcases of clothing and a lap top to begin my schooling.  I graduated, then worked in a chiropractic clinic in the Dallas area for 6 years, and finally moved back to BC to work with my brother in his clinic in Whistler.  I have called Whistler home for the past 5 1/2 years.  This is where I play, where I bike, where I met my husband, where I got married, and where I choose to stay.

I see many amateur and professional athletes, but my passion is children (from newborns through all stages) and pregnant women.  I am specially certified through the Academy of Chiropractic Family Practice and the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association.  

Well, that's some of me:)  Stay tuned for more to come.  Also, like Village Centre Chiropractic and follow me on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn  (see icons at the bottom of the page).

Andrea out.